Saturday, November 22, 2014

Emma Hepperman was suspected to have murdered up to six
husbands, a mother-in-law, possibly a daughter, and to have poisoned a
step-daughter, who survived due to diagnosis following her father’s death. Newspapers spell the name in two ways. The spelling with two n's is correct.

***

FULL TEXT: St. Charles, Mo., June 4 – Mrs. Emma Sarana
Hepperman, who was married seven times, was charged in a warrant today with
murder by poison of her last husband, Tony Hepperman, whom she met through an
advertisement for a position as a housekeeper.

The warrant was issued by Justice of the Peace Gus Temme
after a coroner’s jury had returned a verdict stating that Hepperman,
53-year-old farmer, had been poisoned. He died six weeks after his marriage.

In a deposition read at the inquest, Dr. J. L. Neubeiser,
who treated Hepperman at a hospital here, said the farmer made “a ‘dying
declaration’ that he believed his wife had poisoned him.”

A short, heavy-set woman with gray hair, Mrs. Hepperman, 46,
has exhumed several days ago and the vital organs were examined in the
laboratory of the state highway patrol at Jefferson City, Schneider, 56, a
farmer living near St. Peter’s, Mo., died last September 19 after being ill two
days.

FULL TEXT: A Franklin County jury found Emma Heppermann of
St. Charles County guilty of poisoner her punishment at life punishment. Judge
Breuer gave the case to the jury Thursday evening shortly before six o’clock
but no verdict was returned until 11:30 Friday morning. Mrs. Heppermann was
found guilty on the first ballot taken by the jury, but it required nearly nine hours of balloting before her punishment was fixed, two jurors holding
out for the death penalty.

Mts. Heppermann was married seven times; two husbands
secured a divorce but the other five died under rather unusual circumstances. A
son of her sixth husband told a representative of the Tribune that his father
had the same “stomach trouble” as Tony Heppermann; that there was also a
“robbery” and that all circumstances of his father’s life with the defendant
had paralleled the incidents leading to Heppermann’s death.

Arguments for a new trial were presented before Judge Breuer
Thursday afternoon at two o’clock.

Early May 1940 – Ethel Hepperman, 12, step-daughter –
poisoned, survived May 28, May 28, 1940 – Tony Hepperman, 53, 7th
husband; St. Joseph’s Hospital in St. Charles.; had been married 6 weeks (Emma
was 46)

May 29, 1940 – Emma arrested

***

Notes based on the research of Marsha Corley:

OVERVIEW: Emma Hepperman, 46, was arrested the day after her
53-year-old seventh husband, Tony Hepperman, died in St. Joseph’s Hospital in
St. Charles, Missouri. They had been married only five months.

She was born in 1883 and claimed she was married to her
first husband at the tender age of 14 and had twelve children from that
marriage, yet no records have been found that would support her claim. Charles
Schwack died in 1925 and Emma went hog-wild from then on in the marriage
department, picking up six additional spouses, four others of whom died in her
home, and, according to her, two who divorced her.

After arsenic had been found in the blood of the deceased
Tony Hepperman it was discovered that 12-year-old step-daughter Ethel Hepperman
who had been ill for weeks had also been poisoned. Investigation brought out
the facts of her busy matrimonial career involving spousal suspicious as well
as ordinary seeming (at the time) deaths, including a daughter from her first
marriage and a mother-in-law.

***

***

EXCERPT 1: At the trial for the murder of Tony Hepperman
Alphonse Schneider, brother of husband number six:“She told me three times she wanted to kill
me,” he testified. “One day, in the midst of a quarrel, she said she wanted to
cook me some soup.” Schneider leaned close to the jury and said, “I sure am
glad I didn’t eat any of that soup.”

***

EXCERPT 2: Mrs. Eagan [daughter of Tony Hepperman] said that on the Friday before her dad’s
death he told her his wife had talked him into the notion of selling the farm
and getting away as everyone was butting into their business.

***

EXCERPT 3: Inquest Testimony: The oldest daughter said that
after her father was brought to the hospital he told her that when he was in
St. Louis the Sunday evening his wife brought him coffee with the poison in it
and also water with the same stuff in it but he refused. “She sat at my
bedside, waiting for me to die,” the victim told his daughter. Shortly after
that the officers came and took the woman away. [“Startling Evidence At Inquest
Into Death Of Hepperman Brother Was Suspicious Of Woman’s Actions - Prosecuting
Atty. Dyer Announced First Degree Murder Charges Would Be Filed,” St. Charles
Weekly Cosmos-Monitor (St. Charles, Mo,), Jun. 5, 1940; quoted in e-book]

***

EXCERPT 4: Inquest Testimony of Steve Hepperman, Tony’s
brother: “When got back wheeled him on a chair to his bed, and he looked at me
and he said: ‘My God who would have thought she would poison me,’ and he asked
me, ‘do you think why would she want to poison me I was so good to her?’ He
said ‘where is she?’ and I said ‘in jail.’ He said ‘then keep the dam old bitch
there.’” [“Startling Evidence At Inquest Into Death Of Hepperman Brother Was
Suspicious Of Woman’s Actions - Prosecuting Atty. Dyer Announced First Degree
Murder Charges Would Be Filed,” St. Charles Weekly Cosmos-Monitor (St. Charles,
Mo,), Jun. 5, 1940; quoted in e-book]

***

EXCERPT 5: Trial: Witnesses for the State yesterday included
Steve Heppermann, brother of Tony and Mrs. Rosie Simpson, Negro laundress, who
worked occasionally for the Heppermans. The brother testified that four days
before his death his brother had known he was poisoned. Mrs. Simpson testified
that Mrs. Hepperman told her shortly before Hepperman’s death, “Hep has $1,000
and I’m going to get it.”

***

EXCERPT 6: Mrs. Emma S. Hepperman, seven times married woman,
was found guilty by a jury of twelve men in the circuit court of Union, shortly
before noon today and was sentenced to a term of life imprisonment in the
Missouri penitentiary. The verdict was returned after deliberation of
nine hours. Three ballots were necessary before her punishment was fixed. Two of
the jurors held out for the death penalty on the first vote while one voted for
death the second time. The third ballot was unanimous for life.

The sources used in this preliminary research are all
English language. As such the reports contain many variants in transliteration
of place names and personal names. During the period in question the locales
were within the Austro-Hungarian empire and English newspapers typically listed
the nation as “Hungary.” It should also be noted that since several different
languages are used in these regions there are numerous different “correct”
place names for each locale and that some of the names’ standard spelliung has
chaned over time.

Wednesday, November 19, 2014

On November 19, 2014, a 69-year-old Chisako Kakehi widow and
retired bank employee was arrested in Kyoto, Japan on suspicion of murdering
her fourth husband. She is additionally suspected of murdering six others
between 1994 to 2013: her first four husbands, a boyfriend and a fiance.

In March of this year, during the early part of the criminal
investigation, the suspect told reporters: “If people suspect murder, I’d find
it easier to bite my tongue off and die,” she told reporters in March. She added that she saw herself as “doomed by fate.”

Over the past two decades she has been the beneficiary of
insurance money totaling 800 million yen (US$ 6.8 million) in addition to
other property and money she inherited following the seven men’s deaths.

Police are investigating all seven deaths, stating that the
older men may possibly have died of natural causes, yet all must still be
regarded as possible murders.

~ Suspected murder #1 ~

Kakehi’s first husband died in 1994 at the age of 54.

~ Suspected murder #2 ~

In 2006 her second husband, whom she had met through a
dating agency, died at the age of 69. The presumed cause was “stroke.”

~ Suspected murder #3 ~

Her third marriage ended in 2008 with the death of her 75-year-old
spouse.

~ Suspected murder #4 ~

In 2012 her then-fiance met his fate after collapsing while
riding a motorbike.

~ Suspected murder #5 ~

In 2013, a boyfriend, believed to have been suffering from
some form of cancer, died.

~ Suspected murder #6 ~

In September 2013 a 75-year-old boyfriend fell suddenly ill
after the couple ate together at a restaurant and soon was dead.

~ Suspected murder #7 ~

Husband number four Isao Kakehi fell sick suddenly at home
and was confirmed dead at a hospital in December 2013, less than two months
following the couple’s marriage. An autopsy showed the presence ofcyanide compounds.

The Marquise fled to
London, where she remained three years. Then she returned to France and entered
a convent. She was enticed from it and arrested. In her cell was found a diary.
It showed that had not only poisoned her father and two brothers, and many
hospital patients, but her own child and two servants as well.

Quite recently the police, in the course of a domiciliary visit, discovered
the diary in which she had entered with the greatest minuteness a number of
details concerning her relations with her many lovers, and the still more
damaging revelation that she had killed four other children by different
lovers.

“The discovery of this wholesale system of baby murdering
was brought about by accident, or the women might have continued their
prosperous business for for years to come. So safe did they feel themselves
from detection that one of them kept regular ledgers, in which was inscribed
the sums received, the person the money was received from, the age and
description of the child, and the date it was disposed of. But the help of this
horrible record of crimes the authorities anticipate not only convicting and
effectually disposing of these two female friends, but they also anticipate
being able to make a large number of arrests and bring numbers of others to the
bar of justice.”

“A ledger found hidden behind a secret lock in the closet in Mrs.
Lindloff’s home is said by the police to show a complete record of the
deaths of members of the household, together with the amounts of
insurance collected. This book, written in German, is regarded by the
prosecution as circumstantial evidence to uphold the theory of murder
carried on as a cold, commercial proposition. It is held by the
prosecution that in this book Mrs. Lindloff kept careful account of her
resources and that whenever she needed money she planned a death.
Suspicion was diverted, it is believed, by her frequent changes of
residence.”

“[T]he sisters gave the names of the miserable cutthroats
whom they employed, and Sekina capped the mountain of atrocities by producing a
notebook in which she kept accurate entries of the amounts in cash and in gems
realized from the corpses and the sums each had cost her in miserly fees to the
executioners.”

MARY’S NOTEBOOK: On May 27, 1986, the day Mary and Norma ransacked the
Day School nursery and left behind scrawled boasts of having murdered,
“Mary Bell drew a picture in her notebook of a child in the same pose as
that in which Martin Brown had been found, with a bottle near him with
the word "TABLET.." There was a man walking toward the child. It read,
‘On saturday I was in the house, and my mam sent Me to ask Norma if she
Would come up the top with me? we went up and we came down at Magrets
Road and there were crowds of people beside an old house. I asked what
was the matter. there had been a boy who Just lay down and Died.’ Mary's
notebook entry did not strike the teacher as odd, although she was the
only student who wrote on Martin's death.” [Shirley Lynn Scott, “Mary
Bell: Portrait of a Killer as a Young Girl.” Crime Library, Tru.tv,
undated]

– “With Sarah, all I wanted was her to shut up. And one day,
she did.”

– “Even though I’m responsible, it’s alright. She accepts
and is happy... She’s a fairly good-natured baby, thank goodness - it saved her
from the fate of her siblings. I think she was warned. …another one like Sarah.
She saved her life by being different.”

– “I feel like the worst mother on this earth, scared that
she’ll leave me now like Sarah did. I knew I was short-tempered, and cruel,
sometimes, to her, and she left - with a bit of help.”

An anorexic nurse who has admitted killing patients at a new
Milan hospital to make herself feel powerful and important kept a diary noting
details of their deaths.

2009 – Harsimrat “Simmi” Kahlon – Calgary, Canada

Three infanticides over a period of four years were discovered
following the death of the serial killer mom.

Forensic psychologist Dr. Thomas Dalby worked with
investigators to perform a kind of “psychological autopsy” to reconstruct the
woman’s state of mind. In Kahlon’s diary, which she kept in Urdu, Hindi and
Punjabi, she wrote often that she felt worthless but there were few references
to the babies.”It was clear that she was significantly depressed at times,
looked at herself as worthless, and had lost her will for life,” said Dalby.
Through interviews with friends and family, investigators found that Kahlon
often overreacted to situations and would be happy one day and totally
depressed the next. Dalby said it was unusual for a mother to keep the bodies
of infants in close proximity after killing them.

Bruna kept a diary. After her arrest a controversy arose
resulting from her written claim that the mayor of of the municipality of
Conde, Aluísio Régis, was connected through “The Cartel” to the cannibal sect.

“When Elena Lobacheva’s apartment was searched,
police found five knives and on her computer, a “step-by-step instruction to
killing people and photos of all of her victims with their stomachs cut open
and body parts cut off.” Folders titled “Tenderness” and “Need this” contained
hundreds of pictures and videos of torture and executions. In a notebook
Lobacheva had recorded the number of knife wounds on the gang’s victims’
bodies.” [Will Stewart, “‘Bride of Chucky’ serial killer felt ‘sexual pleasure’
while knifing victims,” The Sun, June 22, 2017]

Arrested
at the age of 67 on suspicion of murder, Samsonova’s diary, written in
Russian, German and English, detailing a reported ten murders. Initial
accounts of the case imply that all of the suspected murders involved
the dismemberment of victims' corpses and the distribution of body parts
in plastic bags throughout St. Petersburg.

Friday, November 14, 2014

Here is an example of a contemporary alimony reform writer who has accepted the fake history of the American family perpetuated by the universities. The history of the family is an academic subject virtually monopolized by scholars whose ideology causes them to produce a false narrative in an effort to promote present-day policy:

“While divorces in Florida are technically “no-fault,” they reflect attitudes and realities from America in the 1950s, when the divorcing husband was the sole breadwinner and always considered ‘the bad guy’ in divorce, while the wife was considered ‘the helpless victim.’
[“What’s Wrong with Florida Alimony Laws?” October 2011, Prepared by Florida Alimony Reform]

The fact is that mandatory alimony was already in the 1920s recognized by judges and a huge number of women editorial writers as obsolete. Conclusion: History Matters!

•◄•►•◄•►•◄•►•

•◄•►•◄•►•◄•►•

1901 ~ “[I] can see no reason why, if a woman marries again,her second husband should not support her and her first husband be relieved from paying alimony.” – Justice Henry A. Gildersleeve, Supreme Court, New York, N.Y. (source)

1909 ~ Although divorced fifty years … and although no mention of alimony was made in the decree, no divorced man is safe from payment of that peculiarly irksome obligation so long as his former wife lives and fails to remarry. … In other words – that is, in plain American language – a wife who obtained a divorce twenty-five years ago, or even fifty, according to Judge Ball, can bob up unexpectedly and, having discovered that her former spouse has become wealthy or merely well fixed, may go into court and successfully demand her “rights.” – Judge Ball ruling, Chicago (source)

1909 ~ Because she had no child as the issue of her marriage with William Welch, and wished to secure alimony from him, Mrs. Cora Welch, plaintiff in a divorce suit borrowed a baby from an orphanage in Georgetown, Wash., and attempted to palm it off on her husband and the court as her own child, born in wedlock. (source)

1911
~“The ‘million dollar alimony girl’—
Ethel Stewart Elliott—went into bankruptcy the other day, giving as her main
asset unpaid alimony amounting to $28,000. Eleven years ago as Ethel Stewart,
dancing in the extravaganza ‘Chris and the Wonderful Lamp’ she danced her way
into the heart of John Love Elliott, millionaire mining man. For a few years
they were happy. Then came the break and – divorce in 1907. Elliott at that
time, it is said, settled $1,000,000 on his wife and allowed an extra $28,000
yearly to support her and her daughter. In the years since then Mrs. Elliott
satisfied her craving for fine clothes, for travel and a life of ease. The
million dwindled away and now she’s ‘broke.’” (source)

1920 ~ “The matrimonial profiteer,” says Judge Graham, “is a thousand times more dangerous than the economic profiteer who can more readily be reached by law.” … “Thousands of young men in the heat of war married women who lived with them perhaps two or three days, then put in claims for alimony. I know of one case in which a woman married five soldiers and for long time collected allotments from each.” – Judge Thomas F. Graham, San Francisco (source)

1925 ~ “There stream into my court sobbing and hysterical examples who imagine that by furtive dabs to moist eyes with their handkerchiefs that they will be entitled to keep their hands in their former husbands’ pocketbooks forever. The courts now are flooded with ‘gimme’ divorces. These are the remain Shylocks without chick or child and possessed only of a great desire to keep a financial stranglehold on the husbands they have released through law.. …

Furthermore, under our modern standards woman is no longer man’s inferior. If you would find out whether this is true ask any one of them and see what she says in reply. Yet there appear before me every day unobligated women who seek from $15 to 50 a week from their former husbands’ earnings to add to their own comfortable salaries and for no other reason, pretext or cause than that they were once married to the men. How unfair and terrible! Heavens knows, it’s hard enough in these days trying to support one household without, being compelled by law to support two. And no childless divorced woman in good health is going to get any assistance from me from now on in continuing this injustice. Marriage is an institution and not a collection business.” – Judge Harry A. Lewis, Chicago (source)

1925 ~ Judge Strong’s decision recognizing the new situation, according to the press reports, was expressed in no uncertain terms. “Everything considered, he said, “I believe alimony should be discontinued because it keeps certain women lazy, gratifies their revenge, makes men miserable and serves no good ends.” – Judge Selah B. Strong, New York (source)

1925 ~ Judge Taulane in discharging the husband stated that he believed “that when a woman has been separated from her husband for ten years, as this woman has, and then concludes to sue for divorce, she is not entitled to alimony while her action is pending, regardless of what her allegations may be. It would seem as though she wanted to create a fund to pay the expenses of her suit.” – Judge H. Taulane, Philadelphia (source)

1926 ~ “The whole business of alimony grabbing is degrading. It cheapens the relations between men and women. I truly believe alimony keeps thousands of couples from being reconciled. The woman being supported by her husband under order of the court isn’t anxious to effect a reconciliation. She is dawling in idleness, free, irresponsible. She’s making him suffer, so she gloats.” – Judge Selah B. Strong (source)

1926 ~ “We love and honour the ladies,” Hoebert said, “but we want to leave to our descendants once more real mothers and wives, and to prevent their being killed off by the alleged emancipation of the woman.” – Sigurd Hoeberth, activist, The World’s League for the Rights of Men, Vienna (source)

1926 ~ I am convinced that very few of the actions for separation with alimony by childless women are sincere; that is, based on their honest belief that they are really entitled to what they ask. – Judge Selah B. Strong, Chicago (source)

1927 ~ “With alimony from one man,” they argued. “I can just manage to exist. But if I can collect from three or four at a time then I’ve a settled income tor life.” – Soviet wives (source)

1927 ~ “[Married women] have become parasites and consumers instead of producers, taking no share in their husbands’ burdens, and are worse chattels than their grandmothers. The vast army of women seeking divorce are mainly after easy alimony from men they have ceased to love – surely one of the most despicable forms of barter that can exchange human hands.” – Fannie Hurst, novelist (source)

1927 ~ Sally thinks she’s a dear, sweet home girl. She’s not. She’s the meanest kind of a slacker and cheat. She let a man build his faith on her. She went with him into a Going Business. She tied up all he had to give of youth and ambition and love. And then, because she was too stingy of soul to do her share, she took her children and left him bankrupt of faith or hope. Some day Sally is going to hear how Ed is “carrying on” and she’s going to be perfectly furious and divorce him and feel frightfully abused if he won’t give her alimony. Would you give an absconding cashier heavy alimony? For that’s what Sally is! -- Elsie Marlowe, journalist (source)

1927 ~ “I feel myself not altogether adequate to the task I have set for myself, but nobody else seems anxious to lead in the new crusade. What we really need is a new and eloquent Dickens, to write in burning words of the wrongs of the alimony slaves, and dissipate forever the idea that there is something intensely funny about a man paying tribute to a lazy, selfish, worthless woman willing to live on his bounty while denying him a husband’s rights.” – Robert Ecob, Alimony Payers Protective Organization (source)

1927 ~ “Alimony is the plague of the country. There are only two ways to beat it: have oodles of money or die.”

“All over the country there are thousands of men in the same boat we are in – victims of designing wives.” said Gasteiger. “But we are organizing against them and will win out in the end. There is too much ‘shaking down’ of men with money. Why, there is an army of childless divorced women living in luxury on the revenue of alimony.” – John Gasteiger (source)

1927 ~ “Polite blackmail is committed every day in the name
of alimony, perjured testimony is suborned in sadly too many instances;
unscrupulous women, in our state of New York, have actually contracted
marriages with wealthy men of wistful affections, just to bring about a speedy
quarrel and collect the alimony ever after.” – Robert Ecob, activist, President
of AAPPA (source)

1928 ~ “The rising tide of divorce has brought us a new industry, the ultimate refinement of golddigging, the perfection of blackmail within the law—marriage for alimony,” said Faith Baldwin, the well-known writer. “Women who do not want husbands or children have found a joker in our marriage laws by which they can establish themselves comfortably for life; free, respectable, rich, safe—without personal cost or sacrifice.

There are thousands and thousands of women who are being supported by men to whom they are no longer wives. There is no doubt that this business of alimony is getting to be a serious menace, it may be all right when a man has plenty of money. To pay a former wife a few thousand dollars in alimony may mean nothing to him. But, on the other hand, just consider how many men are forced to pay alimony who cannot afford it. You will find in the majority of cases that there is no good reason why they should pay it, either. The women are well able to take care of themselves. If they did not lack pride and self-respect, they would not accept money from men who no longer mean anything to them.” – Faith Baldwin, novelist (source)

1928 ~ “The tyranny of modern women, who demand all rights and refuse all duties, who are marrying men only to lead a careless, workless and childless life, or to obtain a divorce and a lifelong alimony, this shameful tyranny is the underlying cause of all evils. “Look at the insane asylum Steinhof in Vienna. Fifty percent of the unfortunate inmates were brought to this place because of their marriage.’’ – Leopold Kornblueh, president of Justitia, Vienna (source)

1928 – Arthur J. Eyring, Cleveland Court’s alimony clerk,
who has paid out alimony for many years declared that although many women are
deserving in being supported by their former husbands, it is unbelievable the
number of women who are receiving checks from two or maybe three misguided
former husbands. He said these divorcees have developed a highly skillful
technique of marrying, divorcing and suing for alimony, then remarry some
wealthier man, divorcing and suing again for alimony. Where there are children,
Eyring believes it is no more than light for the former married man should aid
in supporting his former wife and “kiddies.” It is contended, however, that the
familiar “gold-diggers” far outnumber all other alimony receivers. – Arthur J. Eyring, Cleveland Court’s alimony clerk (Ohio) (source)

1929 ~ “America is still under woman’s rule,” said the official spokesman of the league, “and it might, therefore, be embarrassing to our new members to have their names published. In America the women mistrust us because they think our object is to reestablish the tyranny of men. In reality, all that we ask for men is a fair deal.” – Secretary of The World’s League for the Rights of Men, (Weltbund für Männerrechte) Vienna (source)

1930 ~ “I’m an engineer on the B & O ,” explained Steven Wasilewski. “I’ve got two children by my first wife, and two by my second. The four live with my second wife, and my first wife had me thrown in here because I owed her $600. I can’t pay her off when I’m not earning anything — and here I got four kids and a second wife starving.”

“Christmas in jail?” he murmurs gently. “Oh, I guess I might as well get used to it. I tell you what’s wrong with this alimony business — we shouldn’t ‘a’ got married in the first place.” (source)

1930 ~ “The gold-digging divorcee hires the highest-priced lawyer obtainable. Her former husband has to pay the counsel fee, so he probably has to hire a cheap lawyer for himself." “Usually at the advice of her lawyer, she declares the man’s income to be larger than it really is, and mentions hidden assets which may not exist. The defendant may file a correct answer regarding his income, but only one in 200 ever is granted a referee’s decision. So long as he owes a dollar, he has no legal standing and cannot plead his case. Physical disability or loss of his position or business has nothing to do with it.” Temporary alimony is awarded and the case set for trial. If the man is in arrears on these payments, or has not paid counsel fees, he cannot go to trial. The trial may be delayed for years, and the ex-husband may be sent to jail in contempt of court. – Dr. Alexander Dallek head of the legislative branch of the National Sociological League, (source)

1930 ~ The youngest alimoniac ever confined in jail was 19. He met a gold-digger one week, married her the next, and the third week found him behind bars. (source)

1930 ~ Three Chicagoans who have either been cited for contempt or committed to jail for failure to pay alimony, today sought incorporation of the Alimony Club of America. (source)

1931 ~ “The alimony racket has become the great woman’s industry. A sobbing pretty woman before the court — and what chance has the husband? In many cases the amount of alimony is so large in proportion to the man’s earnings that it completely nullifies any chance of happiness or of another marriage. And why – one cannot help but ask – should a divorced man be denied the right to a normal family life?” – Ruth Brown Reed (source)

1931 ~ “Counsel states no matter how just my claims are he will not give me a chance to go to trial until I pay him the $100. His exact words were ‘You will rot inhere before I will get you out.’” (source)

1932 ~ “They know that under the law when a man has been put in here neither the mayor nor the governor nor the President himself can spring him. Under certain circumstances the governor can release a convicted murderer; he can’t do anything for a delinquent payer of alimony. Neither can the judge who signs the order. It’s not contempt of court, but just plain contempt of wife! And maybe most of the little women don’t know it, but oh, what contempt!” – Adolph Wodiska, activist, President the New York County Alimony Club (source)

1932 ~ “I get
letters from women all over the country charging me with being a traitor
to my sex,” Mrs. Gompers said. Her young face, under a cloud of
snow-white hair, into a smile. “Well, I’m certainly an enemy of
gold-diggers, if that’s what they mean.” – Mrs. Samuel Gompers,
activist, National Divorce Reform League (source)

1933 ~ Today New York city alone has 80 men who are imprisoned just because they cannot pay alimony. Poverty is no excuse for the law. For instance, 58-year-old John Pettet has all the earmarks of becoming an “alimony lifer.” Seven contempt-of-court orders to pay alimony accrued during his incarceration and his formerly flourishing radio business has been shattered. He has no chance of making money to get him out again. (source)

1933
~“There have been several instances [in
California] where women have been collecting alimony from two or three
ex-husbands and when they failed to pay it was jail for them. Because such
practices smack of racketeering the state decided to put a stop to it. If a
woman can't get by on the income of one husband she should take lessons in
management and clamp the brakes down on her expenditures.” (source)

1933 ~ There is nothing in our alleged modern civilization that is so disgraceful as the fact that divorce has become just as much a racket among unprincipled women as bootlegging has among men. A large class of women as bootlegging has among them. A large class of women as bootlegging has among them. A large class of women have made a gift wrecking homes and breaking up men’s lives. They enter into the most binding of all human contracts with no intention whatever of fulfilling it. They perjure their souls without even a qualm of conscience by taking upon their lips the most solemn of all oaths that they do not even mean to keep. – Dorothy Dix, journalist (source)

1933 ~ “Even a lowly alimony prisoner has constitutional
rights,” Justice Bonygne had some crisp things to say about “petticoat
government” and “waspish wives.” … “Let a waspish woman pluck the sleeve of the
judicial gown or nudge the elbow concealed therein,” his Honor meditated, “and
… restraint is immediately cast aside and the delinquent spouse faces the
possibility of unending imprisonment through successive adjudication of
contempt. This carries the supposed rights of woman to absurd, not to say
unconstitutional, lengths.” – Judge Paul Bonygne, Brooklyn, N.Y. (source)

1934 ~ I joined this club primarily because I wanted to see justice done, and I feel that that very often a woman can attack her own sex with more effect than can a man. I am intensely against the ‘woman chiseler’ who marries not for a home and a husband, but for alimony and a good time at some decent man’s expense. – Mrs. Rose Fox, activist, New York Alimony Club (source)

1935 ~ What do you suppose an ex-wife is thinking about when
she has her husband put under the jailhouse for not paying alimony? That
question has bothered thousands of former husbands who from the inside of the
jail saw no rhyme or reason in it. It led to formation of the Alimony Reform
League of New York, which inquired into the subject. Now the story can be told.

Such women are psychopathic cases
almost every time! And they are sadistic! At least they are bordering on some
kind on some on some kind of psychosis that approaches sadism.

The Alimony League got back about
one-half of 2,000 questionnaires it sent out. The first three questions ran:
“Why did you send him to jail? How long are you satisfied now that he is in
jail? How long would you like to have him remain there? More than one-fourth of
the women answering the first question declared he belonged in jail, deserved
it. About 63 per cent were tickled to death with the status of everything in
answering the second question. They were satisfied. About 21 per cent were
sorry, the rest, undecided. (source)

1935 ~“Alimony
caused the suicide yesterday of Mrs. Faye Wegener, a wife whose husband was
compelled to pay a substantial part of his earnings in a divorced wife. Police
found her body and a note voicing her despair in a gas-filled apartment.” (source)

1937 ~ The alimony racket is a definite livelihood for thousands of women. And until men do something about it it will flourish like a green bay tree. – Kathleen Norris, novelist, journalist (source)

1937 ~ Women who marry that they may divorce for money are high-class chiselers who have so far got off scot-free. It’s an old con game with streamline trimmings, and even if the men are dumb enough to fall for it, the women are still responsible for it as they who put over the idealistic and romanticized picture of womanhood which still makes a man believe that the little woman really does want a vine-covered cottage when she says, “Yes.” It’s all too easy these days for a woman to reason along these lines when she is momentarily bored or angry, “Why should I go on putting up with this guy? A divorce, with alimony to take care of the money problem, and I can live my own life as I please.” – Maxine Garrison, journalist (source)

1937 ~ Missouri’s lone woman legislator has offered a bill for the “relief of alimony-ridden” men, or those in danger of being classed in that state. Mrs. Gladys B. Stewart, Republican member from Douglas-co and a former assistant district attorney, has sponsored a measure which she believes will tend to curb “alimony grabbing tendencies” of some members of her sex. (source)

1937 ~ Few people realize how easy it is to have a man thrown into jail for non-payment of money owed. A person who owes as little as $5 may be put behind the bars in New York City even before being tried and found guilty of not paying a debt. …

But let me tell you there’s nothing funny ahead for the man who is escorted to a county jail to serve three months or so just because he is unable to beg, borrow or steal enough money, to satisfy (temporarily, at least) some hysterical or vindictive woman who is his former spouse. If he has a job, he’ll probably lose it; if he has a business, it will probably go to pieces in his absence. He can’t earn any money while he is in jail, so when he is released three months later he will be broke” and jobless, and that Ol’ Debbil Alimony will catch up with him so fast that it is almost a sure-thing bet that his ex-wife will have him back behind the bars in no time.– Lois Maddox Miller, journalist (source)

1937 –“Alimony has become a racket. …After all, the theory of
alimony is to protect a woman who has relinquished her ability to support
herself. She deserves this protection. But like many other laws that were well
conceived, the alimony law is being abused. It not only is providing thousands
of undeserving ex-wives with a comfortable living, but it has been twisted into
a weapon by which women vent their hatred on the men they once loved.” – Spring
Byington, actress, anti-alimony activist (source)

1938 ~ While we Americans sneer at the medieval domesticity
of other nations, which makes the husband the master in no uncertain terms,
those other nations have laughed right back at us for our idiotic glorification
of the American wife. The American husband, it is claimed, makes the money but
his wife gaily tosses it away. He is expected to stick to his job, but she
sloughs off her housekeeping with a flip of the dust mop and spends most of her
time in beauty parlors or at the bridge table. If she decides that she wants
her “freedom,” she gets not only that but enough alimony to keep her from
having to lift a finger for herself. And our European cousins think that such
goings-on can hardly be turned be termed marriage. – Maxine Garrison (source)

1939 ~ “Alimony often amounts to holdups with the aid of barbaric laws,” declared Doctor Katzoff, medical director and consulting psychiatrist of the San Francisco Institute of Human Relations. (source)

1939 ~ You may be young and comely when you marry him. You may still be young and comely when you leave him and file suit for separate maintenance. You may be capable of supporting yourself, yet the law provides that he be your slave for life, your husband in name and checkbook only. Woman’s present economic status no longer justifies this, Judge Joseph Sabath, dean of the divorce judges of Cook county, declared yesterday. He said that as the separate maintenance law, with its condoned abuses, stands, it is merely an open door to “alimony, alimony, alimony.” (source)

1939 ~ As for alimony, one of the profound mysteries of the world is why
men, who make the laws, have not long ago done away with the cruel and unjust
and medieval status that govern the whole subject of divorce and under which
they suffer, whenever they find it impossible to live with their wives, or
their wives get tired of living with them.

That many women marry for the sole purpose of getting
divorces a matter of common knowledge. The women who practice this hold-up game
marry men they don’t love. They don’t
make an effort to get along with them, or do their duty as wives in any
respect, and in the course of a year or two they pick a quarrel and fly to
Reno.

Then their poor dupes have to pay them enough money to
live on luxuriously ever after Why should this be possible? Why should a man
have to spend the remainder of his life supporting a woman who has made his
life a hell on earth? Why should a first husband have to go on supporting his
former wife and her second husband? Why should a poor fellow who can't pay his
alimony be put in jail where he can't make any money? My own idea is that no
young and able-bodied woman without children should ever be given a nickel of
alimony. She took her chances on marriage just as the man did, and she should
be enough of a sport to be a good loser. – Dorothy Dix, journalist (source)

1940 ~ Every woman is entitled to one mistake, but when you have a woman casting aside her second or third husband, you find she is doing it because she is seeking a better, bargain, in, the form of larger alimony allowances. … You will invariably find that each succeeding male is wealthier than his, predecessor, and consequently a better contributor to the alimony-racket. – New York State Senator Edward J. Coughlin (source)

1944 ~ And another, and a bitter and a shameful reason, why women ask
for divorces oftener than men is because they have found out how profitable is
the alimony racket and how easily it can be worked by any pretty woman.
Thousands of women marry men for whom they have no affection, and with whom
they have no intention of living, just because a marriage license delivers
their husbands into their hands as the victims of the lowest holdup game ever
practiced. – Dorothy Dix, journalist (source)

1946 ~ It made me consider afresh what I often have thought of alimony; that alimony is essentially unfair, and that men who make and change laws so easily, are rather stupid that they don’t regularize this one. The childless woman I quote above was about 28. It is possible that “he,” whoever he is, will be paying her $6,000 a year for more than 40 years. A quarter of a million dollars for the 24 months she spent in disillusioning him and breaking his heart. Such a woman, if I judged her rightly, will not re-marry while this golden river is rolling in. She will have her love affairs and her freedom; she will feel herself infinitely superior to the quiet girl who sticks to her bargain, keeps her man happy and secure, and raises children. – Kathleen Norris, novelist , journalist (source)

1951 ~ “After
World War I, which opened up new business horizons to multitudes of women,
these laws became a legal device for picking husbands’ pockets. Something must
be worked out from the present hodge-podge of laws to protect children, and at
the same time prevent the hard-boiled sisterhood from using marriage as a
high-jacking scheme. … Men and women must be equally responsible for the
support of their children – as they have always been. Any effort on the part of
either to shun that duty should be punished severely. But certainly, society
can no longer tolerate the parasitic woman.” – Mrs. Walter Ferguson, journalist (source)

1952 ~“We have a man
who is so mad about alimony rackets, he’s written a book. ‘Alimony, The
American Tragedy,’ is the title and Dr. Charles Wilner of New York is the
author. …

Dr. Wilner’s most startling charge
is that alimony laws are creating an ever-growing group of American spinsters.
The lawyers connive with wives to extract every last dollar from an ex-husbands
purse, he contends. Thus, the divorced men can’t or won’t remarry, because they
are disillusioned and hate the opposite sex.

‘Millions of women pine away in
unwed loneliness, merely because predatory alimony-wives devour their prey so
publicly that many men are frightened away from matrimony into bachelorhood,’
says Dr. Wilner.” (source)

1954
~ “IT’S BAD enough to have to pay that woman moremoney than I can
afford. She always gets it, by mail, right on the nose. But I don’t think it’s
fair for her to poison my daughter’s mind against me.”

Another father says tearfully that, after he complained
his alimony payments were too high, his son told him on his next visit, “I hate
you, Daddy! Go away from here! I never want to see you any more!”

One other weapon the wife can, and docs, use: the Alimony
Jail. Under the law, failure to meet alimony payments is contempt of court,
punishable in some states by up to a year in jail. Although a jail term doesn’t
solve the problem of payment (husbands, of course, can’t pay while behind
bars), many wives don’t care.

“I don’t want the money. I just want him to rot in jail
for what he did to me,” one woman told her attorney. – Divorced men (source)

1954 ~ Will we ever have a new Lincoln to free the alimony slave? In New York’s Manhattan telephone book you’ll still find the entry: Alimony Jail. At various times it’s been my job as reporter to interview inmates of this jail, which is at 434 West 34th Street (appropriately in the Hell’s Kitchen district). Each time I was ashamed of my sex. – Helen Worden Erskine, journalist (source)

Tuesday, November 4, 2014

This checklist is still in progress. The study of female
aggression is still in its infancy. Criminologists largely overlooked violence
by women as a serious subject of study until the 1950s. Yet the subject was
quickly deemed “politically correct” and was deemed an “inappropriate” topic
for scientific research.

Finally we are beginning to see the beginnings of an honest
academic approach to this still largely taboo, subject emerging among the
braver among the new young generation of criminologists, sociologists, and
psychologists.

As of yet, women’s studies specialists have not expressed
any interest in exploring the fact that female serial killers are far more
common and far more diverse in ethnicity and in methods employed than is claimed
by the experts.

***

From a review of the new academic book, Helen Gavin, Theresa Porter, Female
Aggression, December 2014, Wiley-Blackwell: The authors “challenge our most
cherished feminist beliefs about women as the more compassionate, cooperative,
“maternal,” and non-violent of the genders.”

Anna Allas & Gizella Young – “Gizella told the police
that Mrs. Allas has pushed her husband, Mantyo, downstairs; that Andrew and
Steven had been killed by slow starvation, paregoric, and poinson ointment; and
that Richard Duyava had been starved, fed paregoric, and his body massaged with
an ointment which congealed his blood and hampered its flow. Oh, yes, and he’d
been given chopped spiders in his food!”

Elizabeth Bathory – The methods would include
whipping, cutting with shears, burning with fire irons, beating with a cudgel,
and sticking needles under their fingernails. When a girl would attempt to pull
out the needle her fingers would be sliced off. Efforts were made by commoners
to stop the crimes but to no avail. Eventually she would take into her
household teenaged girls from noble families in decline. They were eventually
treated the same as the peasant girls.

Marie-Françoise Bougaran – “When interrogated she confessed
that she had killed all the children by forcing them to swallow excrements, and
then cutting the veins of the neck with a knife, which she inserted in the
mouth. The post-mortem examination of the poor children has fully proved this
statement to be true.”

Raya & Sekina Aly Hammam – “They enumerated the methods
by which various women were put to death, explaining that some were strangled,
some stabbed, some attacked from behind with bludgeons and still others slain
by choloroform or arsenic.”

Marie Jeanneret – “Bodies of her deceased clients were
examined with several types of poison were found. Maried had used atropine (a
derivative of belladonna), morphine, and antimony, a mineral.” [Robert Nash, Look for the Woman, 1981, p. 211]

Rachel Lynn – “Mrs. Rachel Lynn used fiendish cunning in killing the babes
by strangling them to death with cords, by piercing their heads with sharp iron
instruments and burning them alive in red hot stoves and grates.”

Rebecca Smith – “She
confessed that she had poisoned eight of her
children, by applying arsenic to her own breast when she suckled them.”
[“School For Criminals.”The Spectator
(London, England), Aug. 25, 1849, p. 802]

***

Harold Schechter: – Partly, no doubt,
because it was the favorite murder method of Victorian woman, most people tend
to think of poisoning as a comparatively genteel way to commit serial homicide,
not nearly as savage, say, slitting a victim’s throat and tearing out his
entrails. And it is certainly true that mutilation-murder is far more
sensationally grisly. Whether it is also crueler
than poisoning is an open question. Though a significant number of male serial
killers engage in hideous torture, many others – including some of the most
notorious ones – have dispatched their victims in a fairly quick manner. This
is true, for example, of most rippers. The atrocities perpetrated by Jack the
Ripper seem nearly inhuman in their ferocity. But at least they were inflicted
on his victims after death, which came with merciful swiftness.

By contrast, poisoners often subject the
people closest to them – friends, family members, and coworkers – to
excruciatingly slow and painful deaths, and derive pleasure from observing the
torments of their victims.